Hickeys
by BlueIsTheColourOfOurPlanet
Summary: In which people make far too big a fuss about a simple love-bite. Fluff around the magical three words, some suggestive sentences, tiny bits of language. fem!EdxRoy


**No lemon today my friends, I'm sorry. Though I hope you like this piece of rambling I felt like writing instead just as well. So have fun reading about how our favourite midget tries to find out if our favourite pony is still a tamed one or if will shy away from the midget :D **

**.**

**Hickeys**

Edeline Elric had quit the military once her contract had run out when she was nineteen. With her arm restored and Al's body back there was no reason for her to be a dog any longer. Even as a civilian alchemist the military was still her main employer though, hiring the ex-Fullmetal Alchemist to do research for them or help out in other cases where the current staff of State Alchemists couldn't find a solution for a problem. Though this way they didn't have that much control over her any more, couldn't ask her to kill or go to war or do research on alchemical weapons she wanted nothing to do with.

So even if she really worked for the people now and took civilian errands too, she would still come to this office every once in a while, greet everyone and get some task from the military. She was twenty-two by now as she was once again standing in front of these office doors, about to walk into the room where Roy Mustang sat behind a desk, begrudgingly pretending that he was doing his paperwork. Yet at the moment she really felt like she was sat back in time to when she was still fifteen and didn't want to walk into Mustang's office because she'd get a lecture for damaging something.

Though on second thought she felt much worse than back then, because what she had damaged this time was much more important than a stupid building. That and, unlike in the past, she came here to get the lecture not because she had to but because she wanted to. It had to count for something that she was trying to make amends, right? Oh, how she hoped she could fix it. Or at least piece enough shambles of it back together that he wouldn't completely hate her.

So with another deep breath to keep her calm Edeline knocked on the office door, something she had rarely ever done before.

"Come in." He sounded normal. But then he didn't yet know who was there to see him. Ed quickly slipped into the room and closed the door behind her before looking at him. Roy was sitting at his desk, pen in hand and poised over a paper, his chin resting on his left hand and a glorious hickey adorning his neck.

The first time Edeline Elric saw a hickey on Roy Mustang's neck was when she was twelve and just came back from one of her first missions. She had given her report and while trying to drown out his lecture, about how she wasn't supposed to damage buildings, had seen that angry little bruise that was just too high to hide behind his uniform collar. And she had frowned and thought about how someone could managed to get a bruise there on the neck when even the biggest idiots in the most stupid situations usually rather bruised arms and legs or their chest or back. Sensing the chance to get out of the lecture and find out that maybe Mustang had done something stupid she had just interrupted him and blurted out the question: "Just how did you manage to get a bruise there?" and pointed at his neck.

He had blinked at her and for a moment actually looked like he was not sure how to answer the question. After another moment he had slowly, almost carefully, admitted "My partner yesterday was rather... rough."

And naïve Edeline had answered "Oh, well maybe you should change your sparing partner then, they can't be any good if they can't control their attacks enough to prevent something like this. I mean in a real fight you need to injure your opponent to a certain degree to incapacitate them but the neck is quite vulnerable so you shouldn't go for it like that in a mock fight, that's far too high a risk!" Then she grinned and added "That or you should learn to duck faster."

And she had assumed her comment was the reason Mustang laughed.

The second time she saw this kind of bruise mark his neck she had just turned fourteen and raised an eyebrow at Mustang, asking "You still have that horrible sparing partner or are you still unable to duck fast enough because that big blown up head of yours throws you off balance?"

He had stared at her, not understanding, and finally wanted to know: "Just what do you mean, Fullmetal?"

"You have a bruise on your neck again.", she pointed out, rolling her eyes at him.

And the colonel had looked at her, contemplating, and then like he really didn't want to do this asked: "Fullmetal, did you have the bees and flowers talk yet?"

Her head had gone as red as her coat and she had screeched: "Yes, why do you bring it up?! I don't want to talk to you about _that_!"

And he smirked, sort of relieved though she noticed, and said the same as he had back then. "Well, my partner yesterday was rather rough."

And she _understood_ and blushed even more but he ignored the opportunity to make fun of her and instead growled an annoyed "And possessive. Can't stand that. Told her not to leave a mark but nooo..."

"I don't want to know any more about _that_!"

The third time she was still fourteen. She strode into the office and found Havoc looking rather fried and the others laughing at him.

"It's your own fault for mocking him when you know exactly how pissed these things make him!", Breda snickered.

"What's up, did he call Mustang useless?", Ed asked because that was the usual thing they mocked their commander about.

"Nah he just made fun of the colonel coming in with a hickey on his neck. Said it seems like Mustang is claimed for now and asked to borrow the black book."

"A hickey? What's that?", Ed asked.

And they stared at her. Luckily Falman liked to play the walking encyclopaedia and was too caught up in the habit of rattling down explanations to remember that this might end up as a rather awkward and embarrassing conversation. "The word "hickey" is another word for "love bite" and describes a bruise left by long and/or rough sucking and kissing on the same spot of skin, often on the neck.", the stoic officer supplied.

"Oh, I didn't know these bruises had their own name." Ed shrugged. Then she marched on into Mustang's office to deliver her research report and maybe mock her commanding officer a bit, leaving behind a stupidly blinking group of soldiers.

The colonel was indeed in a really grumpy mood and since his desk was clear for once it was definitely not the paperwork that was responsible for his gloomy deposition. Ed grinned.

"So the great colonel is sulking about a hickey?", she teased.

He snorted. "I am not _sulking_. I am merely displeased about it." he then asserted.

Ed raised her eyebrows. "Shouldn't a womaniser be proud to have some marks that show he got another woman into bed?"

"As a matter of fact, no.", the colonel said while tugging his collar up. "For one hickeys are what teenagers do and second and more important: A hickey is a claim of possession, it's like marking your territory. And I can't stand it when women get clingy and mark me as theirs. They know my reputation so they know I'm not out for a committed relationship. Plus a hickey scares off my next date because while they know I'm not a saint women still don't like to see marks the girl I had before them left on me.", He gave up on his collar and instead rested his elbows on the table and his chin on his interlaced fingers, smirking. "But then, as I recall from our last conversations about a hickey, you don't want me to talk about_ that_ anyway, so we might as well carry on with business."

Ed fumed and thought about if that implication about her being immature warranted a rant about not being short but before she could start yelling Mustang had already asked for her report.

The fourth time she saw Mustang with a hickey on his neck she was fifteen and came into the office finding Hughes there who had his arm thrown around Mustang's shoulders, ruffling the colonel's shaggy mob of black hair as he happily crowed: "So the Mustang has finally been tamed!"

"Hughes, dammit, let go of me! And no I still don't want a wife!"

"Aww come ooooon Roy! She dared to give you a hickey when you told her not to, she must really like you, you could be such a happy family and your kids could play with my darling Elicia!" Hughes gushed on while Ed tried to stifle her laughter so she wouldn't alert them to her presence and ruin her fun of watching Mustang's unhappy struggle.

"She doesn't like _me_, she likes my looks and my uniform.", Mustang clarified seemingly uncaring and swatted at Hughes's hand on his head, trying to stop his friend from tousling his hair even more. "And _even_ _if_ she liked me for me, I can neither offer the time and the attention, nor the safety a committed girlfriend or a wife would deserve, not when I'm trying to make it to the top. So better break her heart after only one night when it doesn't hurt that much and let her go find someone who can devote his whole being to her, than slowly break her heart over years of her trying to put up with me until she finally realises I'll never make a fine husband and all ends in sadness.", he finally managed to get out of Hughes's grip and went to sit behind his desk again. "So stop freaking out every time someone plants a hickey on my neck, it's not like I give my consent to their claim on me. I hate hickeys and I won't get a wife, period." And with that he grabbed a random paper from his desk and started reading.

Hughes just looked at him for a while then grinned and said. "You might be right that you're no ideal boyfriend or husband material, but tell you what Roy, if it's true love then it'll work out anyway!"

"You're so cheesy, Maes.", Mustang rolled his eyes.

"No, I'm just not a grouchy pessimist like you! And apropos cheesy, have you seen this picture of my darling Elicia backing a cheese cake with her wonderful mother? She looks sooooo cute in her little apron and the cake was delicious, I bet she'd make a wonderful chef, just look at her Roy, look at that! And this one...-"

And Ed decided to come back later so she wouldn't have to endure Hughes's onslaught of pictures, too.

The fifth time she was seventeen and heard about the hickey long before she saw it, because two elderly women at the café table next to her were talking about the colonel.

"..and I told Charleen not to do that, but she said she'd make him hers for everyone to see and when he can't go date someone else because that hickey keeps them at distance then she'd make sure to hook up with him again and so on and so on until he wouldn't struggle any more."

"That is really stupid! She doesn't even really know him!"

"I told her so, but you know that Charleen, had always been an arrogant and dense one, thinking relationships are only made of physical affection and her nice body would be enough to make that colonel fall for her. Margret really should have raised her girl better."

"Yes, should have taught her that you can't be the one special girl who tames the womaniser and makes him fall when you're _trying_ to be that girl just to feed your ego with the thought of being special."

"Indeed, that is no love, that is just a sad attempt at making yourself feel better."

"And I'm guessing she'll only feel worse at the end because he will reject her like the others. Even little old me heard he hates hickeys and warns the girls not to leave one and when they do it anyway he doesn't take kindly to them."

"Yes, yes, I heard he's cold as ice when they try to speak to him again to get another date and make him theirs completely."

And indeed, two days later Edeline saw a rather pissed but stone faced Mustang politely but coldly brush off a woman who had tried to get him to stop walking via rather obnoxious flirting for a while now and now was boldly stepping in his way, crowding him against a near wall. Mustang first backed off and rolled his eyes, explaining to her that if she couldn't even respect his simple wish not to be marked with a hickey then he doubted that she would be able to put up with some other parts of his personality (which by the way she didn't even know that well so she should stop saying she loved him), so, NO, the would be no _us_ for them. Only when that didn't help did he finally just put his hands on her shoulders and forcefully made her step to the side, telling her that she knew what she was getting into when dating him and that she was acting rather obnoxious now and that he had no more nerve to put up with that, before just walking away and into the safety of the military HQ. Until today that was the only time Ed had ever seen him act like that towards a women.

And today... well today Ed feared that the second time that a clingy woman would get Mustang annoyed and angry enough to be this harsh, and bodily remove her out of his space, might have come.

Because the hickey currently adorning his neck was made by her – And she had no intention to let him go without a fight for keeping him.

Because she loved him – And she knew him well enough to know that was true.

She looked at him as he sat there, only acknowledging her presence with a raised eyebrow. His gaze was cool where it normally was warm. Ed didn't even want to imagine how much it would hurt her should he push her away like that girl so many years ago. Not physically, no, if it hurt physically she could take it. But it would hurt her soul to feel those hands that had always been so loving push her away harshly. Roy had always been so gentle... Not because he thought she was weak or fragile or something, (He knew enough tough woman to never judge strength by gender) but simply because he could, because he wanted to. She loved that about him. Loved how the one time she had asked him to help open a jar of pickles he had stared and asked if she didn't feel well. Loved how he'd never treated her like she couldn't look out for herself though always made clear that he'd look out for her anyway because he cared. Loved how he always made sure she would get her healthy dose of gentleness to work against the stress the rough rest of the world threw on her, had done so ever since the beginning.

And ever since that beginning almost three years ago the list of things she loved about him had steadily grown. So many small and big things she'd come to love about him ever since she begrudgingly stomped back into his office at nineteen, asking him if he knew how to advertise yourself as a freelance alchemist in Central. So many wonderful times that had come from this. And so many wonderful things that might still be to come if Ed would just manage to fix this.

He hated hickeys, she had known that for so long, just why didn't she manage to control herself yesterday? Simple. Because all those things she had come to love about him made him the guy he was. And that meant by loving all these things about him she loved _him_.

"Hey..." Lame start, she knew that, but she needed to test her voice before saying the important stuff. It came out far smaller than her usual loud talking anyway. "I just came to tell you I'm sorry, because I know how you hate these things. But also to tell you that I didn't do it to stake a meaningless claim on you. I was just happy you know? So happy because of what you said yesterday... And I just wanted to show you that, I wanted to let you know that I was happy, wanted you to know I think the same, that I want all of you, that I like all of you. But I didn't show it the right way, I know. You know me, I don't think sometimes, I just do what feels rights..."

Ed knew she was more or less rambling but she had never been good at apologising and neither was he though she loved that about him because it made him able to understand while she rambling so helplessly.

"And I know you hate it even more that I came to your work place to tell you, like some clingy stalker, but you weren't there this morning for me to say all this, you were gone and I was just afraid you'd stay gone and now I feel stupid but I can't help it, I just don't want to lose it all. I don't know if I act ridiculous at the moment and shouldn't make such a fuss about two years but..."

Two years and she loved how they never had a problem confronting each other about things that annoyed them, loved how that might lead to lots of petty arguments but prevented problems from being pushed down until everything escalated in one giant argument that would really hurt. Loved how even those petty arguments were rare in their home because they would work off a lot of the general frustration induced by life in little good natured fights at the office whenever Ed came in there for a mission and Roy just wouldn't drop his usual annoying work self to keep their professional relationship there maintained. And on the few occasions that they had an argument at home Roy would calmly listen to her yelling, maybe throw in a sarcastic comment or too, but mainly he'd let her vent and yell before stating his opinion when she was out of breath from yelling. And then he'd offer solutions or compromises. She hated his politician-mask but his diplomatic skills without that mask she loved. Because she could see that he was really, honestly trying to make things all right for the both of them. So on the very few occasions that she would actually break his composure and make him angry enough to yell and shout back she would gladly be the one to come shuffling into the bedroom where he'd be trying to calm down and make amends first, even apologise no matter if the argument was really her fault our not, simply to show him that whatever they had was important to her too, simply to show him she knew how he always pulled himself together during all the other arguments and was grateful he did so. He'd usually apologise too then and they'd just look at each other for a moment before they'd kiss and make up, literally.

And she hoped that maybe this would happen too today. Though this was different from their usual spats because it was no argument per se. This time she had simply disregarded a trait of his personality, the part that was extremely shy and reluctant to admit to any kind of commitment, had done something to him he'd ask her not to. And that was quite unfair when she loved how Roy had never tried to force anything onto her she explicitly said she didn't want. When she loved how he had never tried to change her in any way. She had said that she didn't want to go to fancy restaurants because while they had good food she hated the fancyness and she loved how Roy who really liked going out hadn't sulked but simply done who knows what to find all the non fancy restaurants that were still absolutely wonderful. He might have mocked her table manners every once in a while but that was a common courtesy Ed didn't mind to put a bit more effort into. (Plus talking to a quick wit like Roy had kept her from wolfing down her food very well, the conversation definitely interesting enough to make her chew properly as she listened to what he had to say)

But then yesterday he had acted like he'd finally overcome his aversion to official commitments and she just hadn't been able to stop herself.

"We just had so little at the start and now it seems like so much. Okay I don't know if it's much, you probably don't know either, we'd need someone who knows more about this... relationship stuff, but... it certainly seems much to me and I wanna fix it and regain as much of it as I can..."

Yes, they really hadn't had much in the beginning, not even sex or kissing, or anything else not platonic. She had just somehow come to whenever she was in town take over the guest room in the new house he bought when getting a promotion to brigadier-general. And they had eventually stopped calling the house 'his' and lived a weird but nice and pleasant coexistence, either getting used to or forming compromises concerning the unique habits of the other. Ed just learned not to leave things lying around on the floor because Roy, (for some freaking reason knowing his way around the place like he'd lived there forever within three days and therefore never looking where he was going and never bothering to switch on the light if he went for the bathroom at night) would stumble and fall flat on his face whenever there was something in his way he didn't place there. And Roy just learned to arrange the things Ed liked to eat very much in the neither shelves and cupboards and put the stuff she couldn't stand on the top shelf where it was out of her sight and mind and safe from being destroyed.

She loved how despite his stiff appearance Roy would even agree with ridiculous ideas like transmuting an extra compartment for the milk into the fridge so the vile stuff could never touch her food unless she got him to make stew. Loved how he would freely laugh on childish crazy days like this. She also loved how he would agree to transmute things for her in general. Ed would give him an array she had constructed and he would give it a critical, analytic stare, not because he didn't trust in her abilities but because he appreciated the work behind it and wanted to understand, before playing the guinea pig.

Oh and how she loved the way he made coffee, perfect from day one on because Roy himself had quite the addiction to the black broth. She loved how he simply always made food for two because it took him no less than a day to figure out that even if Ed claimed she wasn't hungry right now because she was busy reading, the moment she smelled or saw the food she would want some anyway. Ed thanked him by making dinner whenever he was working late, or making breakfast on the weekend when she was awake first. The first time he had come home to dinner ready on the table he had looked positively stunned in a most adorable way but she loved the smiles that he couldn't seem to hide even more.

That was how they had lived then and it made her feel so safe and welcome every time she stepped into the house, be it after two weeks of research or one hour for a trip to the grocery shop. She loved the feeling of coming back from a research mission in a library at who knows where and seeing him sit on the couch, reading or working out one of his schemes and sometimes indulging in a glass of scotch, feet on the coffee table and not the least bit bothering to try and seem stoic when she dropped down next to him and revelled in the warmth of the fire going in the fire place. No, she could see he was pleased to see her back healthy.

It took less than a year until the first time they both fell asleep sitting on that couch and woke up wrapped around each other. She had never seen him blush before, but damn she loved it when his face was adorned with light pink. They wrote it off as nothing that time, though.

Considering his ambitions Ed would more often than not be the one sitting on the couch first though because Roy was still at work and then she always had fun seeing him coming in, walk past her, stop, back up a few steps and then grin at her. Even though she hated the short jokes she was still amazed at how many variations of "Oh, you're so short I didn't see you there at first" existed, because so far he had yet to tell the same version of the joke twice. So she chucked a couch pillow and yelled at him for the short joke, though she loved the happy grin that adorned his face when he saw she was back. Usually these evenings would end in a pillow-fight or a good ol' bantering contest, sometimes some sort of wrestling for a place on the couch when she refused to let him sit down as a punishment for calling her short. She hated and loved it when sometimes at the end of it all he just threw her over his shoulder and carried her to the kitchen like a kicking bag of flour so they could have dinner, taking the bruises he received on the way with grace.

It took less than a year for one of their more heated bantering contests and pillow fights to end with Roy on his back on the floor with Ed straddling his hips as she tried to make him eat a pillow. She only realised the position was rather intimate when Roy suddenly froze and said: "Ed, you better stop squirming now or we're gonna have a problem."

And that was when she started to not only love Roy's personality but his body too. It sounded stupid but it was like she was for the first time aware that he was _a man_. And a rather attractive one at that. She couldn't help but love the way his clothes hugged his body, couldn't help loving the way he moved, couldn't help loving those dark eyes of his.

And that was the beginning of more.

Despite the embarrassment she had loved how the first time they ended up as good as naked in his bed Roy had seen the way she swallowed as he took her panties off and with a raised eyebrow had said "You act like this is your first." And when Ed had spluttered and stuttered and tried to admit that he was right, it was her first, he had pulled her panties back up and told her she shouldn't give away her virginity to some womaniser fourteen years her senior who'd drop her the morning after, before giving her one last lingering kiss and going to sleep.

They ended up almost having sex four more times before Ed just couldn't take it any more and after coming back from a mission simply lied. He'd asked why she was here with him then and not with the special person who had deserved being her first and she had said the guy had turned out an asshole after all. (She was lucky that Roy knew she hated bawling like a baby in front of others or he might have gotten suspicious about her calm attitude while talking about her supposed first heartbreak) Though of course when she couldn't stop herself from flinching in brief pain at that first intrusion into her most intimate place he knew she had lied, anyway.

And she loved how he had been truly pissed about being lied to then, not because she liked to hurt his feelings or something but because it showed that he cared about her and valued her word. When he asked her just why she lied she told him that Roy could decide that he didn't want to sleep with her but not that she didn't want to sleep with him, that it was her decision with whom she wanted to have her first and if that was Roy with all his faults then it was Roy with all his faults, end of the story. And besides, even if he was a much older womaniser and wasn't the perfect first love or something, she trusted him not to just drop her, to still be the same Roy she'd come to know even if they had sex this once. He'd contemplated that and a few other pros and cons, and considering that during the whole ordeal of deciding he had still been sheathed inside of her he had really done a remarkable job of thinking it over before he finally gave in as Ed started squirming. And so Edeline had become one of the lucky people who's first was damn amazing.

And she loved how Roy never had a problem keeping up with the raging sexual appetite of the young he had awakened that day. He had talented fingers and taught her early on how to... well, ride the Mustang on his lazy days when he didn't want to be the one to do the work. So whenever he wasn't working in the professional military sense, or sleeping, then she was free to pounce on him, just as long as she'd accept that they were no couple and he was still a free man who'd date others when she wasn't around. Oh, and no hickeys of course!

She never had a problem with his dating habits back then. She had only ever known him has an incorrigible womaniser, never thought that he could change and seen no reason to try and make him, since he never brought anyone home, knew better than to catch any diseases and on the few occasions when he went out with someone while she wasn't on a mission Ed had quite the fun time mocking him when he came back with lipstick on his neck and cursing about having to get that out of the collar of his shirt, or came back tipsy, which meant he was slightly slower in thinking, a fact that she mercilessly used to for once have the last word in a bantering contest.

Though she realised she felt truly happy when he slowly stopped going out with woman that were no off-limit informants of his. There was no more lipstick or missing buttons on shirts, no more strange perfume and he was the one to pounce on Ed the moment he saw she was back after having been gone to see some ancient library for a week or two. She really came to love the expression on the face of a Roy Mustang who had gone two weeks without sex and walked into the house to find her sitting naked on the couch. It effectively stopped the "oh, didn't see you there"-short jokes.

Then came the first times where they'd seek closeness in a purely innocent way. And Ed loved how he stopped scowling at her for just sleeping in his bed every night, how he always leaned against her side or lay with his head on her lap when they were reading on the couch, how he never protested when on the days when he was swamped with paperwork and had to bring it home and work on it until late in the night she would climb into his lap, her chest against his, legs dangling left and right of him, arms around him, her head resting on his shoulder. He'd just wrap his left arm around her while he continued to scribble on the papers with the right, his head finding a resting place on her shoulder as well, and they would sit like that until he'd finally stretch and mumble a soft "Done, if my legs wake up again we can go to bed now."

She loved how when she moved next to him in the morning he wouldn't be startled awake and promptly push her down and restrain her because of a self defence mechanism he probably learned in the war and never abandoned since then simply because there was no one there to teach him how to wake up in peace again while having company, any more. He would never admit it, and neither would Ed, but they both loved to wake up two minutes before the alarm clock went off and just revel in the warmth and the feeling of being one cuddling tangle of limbs before they had to start the day.

She loved how even the dark nights when she'd wake from a nightmare were better with him around. Roy was very shy about taking comfort but never about trying to give as much as he could. They both were. But Roy never spouted meaningless words of comfort, he just pretended to still be asleep, never having heard her scream, never having felt a kick of a flailing limb, his arm snaking around her and pulling her in so he hold her a seemingly subconscious reaction. When after a while she chose to talk about some nightmares he'd think before opening his mouth as well, think about if he could offer advice or which words of solace would really help her, would be accepted by her because they weren't hollow. That's why she loved his comfort.

Getting through to Roy was a bit harder, his nightmares were fewer but always left him a shaking mess, never flailing but instead with muscles cramping like he was trying to stand at military attention while lying on the bed, like even in his sleep he was trying to keep the masks and walls up and let nobody see. Left alone he'd wake slowly. When she tried to touch him he'd snap awake with a sharp intake of breath. Either way, even when she was sitting up and talking he never realised she was awake too, just jumped out of bed and with eyes still hazed by the vision of another world he ran straight for the bathroom to get some cold water into his face, then for the liquor cabinet, downing at least three shots of the strongest stuff he had before carefully climbing back into the bed. If he realised that Ed was awake once he had settled back in he would softly tell her he just had to go to the bathroom (which wasn't exactly a lie because he really went into the room) and was sorry for waking her, she should go back to sleep. Then he'd snuggle up to her and close his eyes again. After a few seconds he'd pull her really close and practically curl around her. It took a while until he didn't jump out of bed any more and went straight for the part of protectively curling around her, her presence finally enough for him to go back to sleep, like the knowledge that he wasn't only able to destroy and kill but could also protect, help people, make up for the orders he had followed, somehow calming him more than if Ed had tried to curl protectively around him. And Ed was happy to know that he chose _her _to curl around, despite all her sins, her faults, her scars and her temper.

And she had been even happier yesterday. Roy knew that she didn't really like it when he stood behind her and rested his chin on her head, it felt like a bodily told short joke. Yet yesterday he had once again _forgotten_ about that, hugging her from behind as she was standing in front of the dresser to pull out her sleep clothes and resting his head on the crown of her blond hair. And just when she was about to grumble a warning "Roy..." he'd spoken first and said: "You know why I like doing this? 'cause it reminds me that your body fits so well with mine." Once again she had wanted to say something but he tightened his hold a bit and took a deep breath of her scent. "Mmmh perfect." came his simple statement.

"If my height is so perfect then why do you keep mocking me?", she asked.

"I like to listen to how creative you can be. Only makes you more perfect. For me" he added when she was about to protest that she was far from perfect.

Edeline blinked in surprise. He sounded far too honest to have become stupid enough to try his prince charming fad on her. And it wasn't like he'd never made her a compliment before. It was just that he was in the habit of cleverly placing his true compliments in a way that kept them from being too obvious. So just what was he up to?

"Yep, perfect.", he absent-mindedly repeated, interrupting her musings. And then came the words that made her heart skip a beat. "I think I love you."

While her heart had skipped that beat and a few more she had been able to feel his speeding up, beating fast and nervously against her back. Like in some Morse-code gone wrong it was trying to tell her that it belonged to her now, begging her to reciprocate the feeling. And her heart had sprung back to life, beating hard and loud and feeling like it had climbed up into her throat, leaving her unable to speak, unable to do anything else than just turn around and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him and finally, truly and really and officially make love with him instead of just having sex.

And she had been so damn happy and he had smiled so much and seemed just as happy as she did. He hadn't said anything when he had seen the hickey on his neck as they both lay cuddled up in the aftermath and looked at their reflection in the mirror by the dresser just to revel in the fact that they truly had each other now. So she had assumed that maybe this one time it was okay. She'd still say a small sorry tomorrow but she wouldn't ruin the mood now.

Yet in the morning he was gone. Ed woke up alone.

So here she was now, standing in his office, swallowing again as she waited for him to show a reaction to what she had said. Hoping that yesterday had been true and that the fucking hickey hadn't ruined it all. That she hadn't ruined it all.

Because "I gave it to you because I love you too." she finally finished.

Silence.

Then Roy slowly shook his head and stood. Ed's heart stopped again, but for an entirely different reason this time.

Pain.

She watched as he walked, precise, sure steps, towards the door.

No!

Wait...

To her. Who was standing in front of the door.

He leaned in and went down on her neck with the ferocity of a vampire out for blood yet when his mouth met her skin it was incredible softly. Languidly, lazily, like he had all the time of the world.

"You're stupid.", he said with a small chuckle when his lips finally left the darkening patch of skin. "I told you I love you and that means I trust you not to abuse your ownership of my heart. So you can stake all the claim on me you want to, I know you do it for the right reasons. If you'd just gone for the fridge like every other morning instead of directly running here in a panic you'd have seen the note telling you I was called out early and didn't want to wake you. That's the only reason I was gone"

Ed released the breath she'd been holding, relieved. "And you asshole could have been a bit nicer than just sitting there and leaving me to be scared and fidgeting, trying to gauge if I made you hate me.", she then grumbled softly, her cheeks red.

"I just wanted to see if you really wanted this or if you just responded out of a crush." An apologetic kiss to her forehead, arms gently pulling her in for a hug.

"Now you're the idiot! Like anyone could put up with your pompous ass for more than a month with only having a crush to feed their patience!" she retorted while snuggling up against his taller form.

He chuckled again. "Good thing we've cleared things up now."

For a while they just held on to each other, completely content. Then Ed's stomach chose to announce that she really hadn't looked into the fridge that morning. And she loved how Roy bravely faced Hawkeye's wrath and took Ed to have breakfast in a none fancy restaurant when he was supposed to do his paperwork.

**.**

***attention craving authoress jumps out from behind the wall and asks for your opinion on her story*  
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**:P**


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